Someone skipped on the rent and they left behind a huge upright piano, which got moved into our apartment so the other apartment could get rented out. I took to it and started playing.

When I was four years old, my mother owned some tenements in the Bronx.

We're doing a workshop over the first two weeks of December, I believe, with Graciella Daniele directing it.

I used to perform all the time but I haven't performed in New York in a very long time.

I'm lucky to be in a profession where you can keep getting better.

I decided during my teens that I wasn't going to have the life of a concert pianist, much to the chagrin of a lot of people who had put a lot of money into me!

So I went into jazz and performed in jazz clubs all over the country.

I have a bunch of albums I would love to get re-released.

My background was in performing originally.

Since I was the solo artist as well as the writer for the songs, I figured I had enough credits on it already.

To put it in musician's terms, my chops are good.

Someone skipped on the rent and they left behind a huge upright piano, which got moved into our apartment so the other apartment could get rented out. I took to it and started playing.

I'm trying to get hold of them... the trouble is a lot of the companies that recorded and produced the albums went bust, so I don't know where to get the masters.

Acting is the most fun. I like to do it and it's great that I can still do that, but you know, you don't really have a lot of control over things, so it's real hit or miss.

I used to forget that I was an Indian woman. I would even forget that I was a woman. I don't think of myself as bringing to the table a lot of 'women's issues.' I don't feel the need to write about maternity. I grew up thinking that the talented people in comedy were hard-joke writers.

When I was working on the unauthorized biography 'Stan Musial: An American Life,' which came out in 2011, old opponents recalled how Musial knew their names after they had been in the majors only a few days.

For me it's the high-water mark of American culture - not so much contemporary jazz, which has become kind of academic, but the jazz from the '20s on through the '70s.

One step two steps three steps like winds of time experience joy of centuries when movements become revelations of the dance of destinies.

I used to get an awful lot of letters, and they have almost all gone. I used to answer nearly all of them.

Even if you do succeed most people wouldn't notice anyway.

I don't regret setting bombs.

I didn't want to be short. I've tried to pretend that being a short guy didn't matter. I tried to make up for being short by affecting a strut, by adopting the voice of a much bigger man, by spending more money than I made, by tipping double or triple at bars and restaurants, by dating tall, beautiful women.

While I was holding on all you did was let go.

I have found that, in the composition of the human body as compared with the bodies of animals, the organs of sense are duller and coarser. Thus, it is composed of less ingenious instruments, and of spaces less capacious for receiving the faculties of sense.

Humor is mankind's greatest blessing.

Pittsburgh was the first chance to be in a classroom with other writers, to have conversations with other writers. In fact, after graduate school, I lived in Japan, Ohio and New Orleans, and only upon leaving Pittsburgh did I see what a special community it was for poets, so I was eager to come back. It's a strong arts community across the board.

You've got to separate the singer and the songs.

The inventory process and stepping back in your life can sometimes be a very dark process. But it also can be extremely funny and surprising.

It is important to me that what Poe has to say gets across to people. I want to give people the feeling that I get from all this. I think that we are succeeding. The feedback is very warm.

Growing up, I was in and out of trouble in group homes and other institutions, and when I was 14, I was locked up in a psychiatric hospital for a number of months for behavioral problems.

Simplicity is the key to brilliance.

The terrorist seeks to smash the most fundamental liberty of all: the right to lead our everyday lives on the basic assumption of safety.

The basic fundamental of behaviour should be to give.

I am a local economic revitalization strategist. But I am also a TV/radio host, and a small business owner. I find ways to use money more efficiently to realize positive goals for everyone.

An essential element for good writing is a good ear: One must listen to the sound of one's own prose.

I enjoy reading blogs, but am not interested in having my spurious thoughts out there.

I am no historian but have tried to stick tight to the facts.